I saw a statistic that there were over 10,000 active cults in the United States and the number of online cults has grown since the 2020 pandemic. That statistic doesn’t include organized religions. I wonder what it means. Are people so desperate to believe in something, anything that they will do anything?
My answer is opposite of what most people would want. I think there is nothing to believe in. Religion and cults all give people a system of beliefs to explain life and somehow show that there’s meaning to our silly insignificant lives. For me, it doesn’t work that way. The only thing I know to be true is God. Everything else could be an illusion. My life is insignificant, silly, and small in relation to the universe. However, I don’t need to someone to tell my life is meaningful. I don’t need to believe in anything, in a systems of beliefs, in a religion. The only thing I really need is that essence deep inside of me that tells me some God created me. I don’t know what else is real. I don’t know what else is meaningful. I just know if a surrender to my creator and let that creator guide me, then whatever happens will be His will.
Human beings want so much for explanation and for meaning, but when I write about God transcending the dualities of the universe, I write about how I have no control and how I can’t understand. I write about how nothing and everything become the same and how meaning and meaningless are the same thing. When confusion and understanding are the same, then I am finally getting close to transcendence. Humans want to believe. Yet when transcendence takes place, belief and doubt are the same.
I guess my point is that God isn’t about holding on to a belief system and making other people believe the same as I do. God is about letting go and surrendering myself to Him. It’s about knowing that everything could be an illusion, it could all be a dream, or a computer simulation. It could all be meaningless. And yet, my faith tells me there’s one thing only one thing that I can hold onto that is true: God created me and if I surrender to that, He won’t abandon me and my life will be meaningful somehow. And the greatest gift is that I don’t need to know. I don’t need to belief in a religion, in a book, or a set of rules or ethics. I only need to believe in God and His plan for me.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
